Backyard Aquaponics
A place to discuss aquaponics

At the moment the only pump is down in the bottom of the in ground (used to be Hydro) tank. It pumps out of there into the hydro modified (media filled) troughs and now also goes to the top of the barrel ponics system. the barrel ponics fish tank will only fill half way and remain a bit over half full and the overflow beyond that level will go back to the old hydro tank. There is a float valve in the in ground tank so that I can't run the system dry. That happened once last spring and burned out my last pump so lesson learned.

Build time, hum, it got spread over several days and exact numbers on person hours weren't tracked. Not including the shopping trip for materials, I would estimate actual construction and cutting by two people would be about 4 hours. Then I expect that there are another 8 hours of one person tinkering spread over a few days. Oh, and I forgot the gravel washing, haven't done that yet so I don't know.
Tomorrow I intend to add water and test the flush valve and such.

I did set up the barrels to be able to use loop siphons. I will have to see if that works ok in conjunction with the flush valve or if it causes periodic overflowing due to siphon not kicking in during the previous cycle. We shale see. If I find that to be the case, I suppose I just drop the loop down into the tank and let the siphon action only work for the bottom of the grow bed. I left that all flexible for now.

Water grass? I don't water grass, I cover it up with cardboard and other people's bagged leaves.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

Coming together nicely TC...so how far are you into the planning of system II

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Do it - like 'Ell!

LOL, Well funny you should say that. As my gardens evolve around the yard like giant amoeba, my ponics system/s will probably turn into strange things that will eventually take over the neighborhood.

Actually, I started the first system with every intention that it would either grow or turn into at least two systems. This first barrel ponics plus system will be the learning system. Eventually there will be a larger system which will likely include an in ground pond that will have ornamental properties and perhaps a waterfall where I can not only grow fish but also some water plants.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

Ok, my feet are wet.

Now I suspect that I broke a cardinal rule somewhere here. When measuring for where to put the flush valve in the flush tank barrel, I followed the instructions but I didn't trust my instinct. The measurment instructions placed the hole for the flush valve such that the seal can't sit perfectly flat. Well the pictures in the Manual seem to show some of the same molding characteristics as mine so I figured, the manual knows what it's doing and I didn't want to mess up the alignment of the stuff to pull the flush valve. Anyway, I put the hole where the measurments indicated and now I can't get the darn thing to seal since the bottom of the barrel isn't perfectly flat there. I've tried adding an extra gasket and a few other things but I don't think there is any chance that I will ever get this to seal where it is.

Any ideas on how to patch a 2 1/2" hole in the bottom of a blue barrel?

Other than this rather glaring issue, everything else seemed to work great. There may be a little problem in that the in ground tank really needs another 15 gallons of capacity to deal with running the system this way but I can think of several ways to work this out or perhaps I just need to get the pond liner and dig a slightly bigger hole.

The trickle out of this faulty seal is big enough that I'm thinking about how to catch it and run it through troughs back to the in ground tank.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

Get a piece of scrap plastic that will cover the hole. Then stick it on using aquarium silicone adhesive. You want it so that the weight of the water is pushing the patch onto hole in the barrel, sealing it tighter.

yeah, what tamo said. Just be aware of the non flatness of a blue barrel, and make sure there are no leaks. (lots of roof and gutter silicone)
you could try packing the sides of your patch up if it doesn't fit nice, but you'd want to be careful.
The advantage of this, is it will give you a nice sealed flat surface to mount your valve onto

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KudaPucat
A horse is only a horse for as long as we see it as a horse.
The Pale Horse Rides Again
My System #2

Time to play with patching tomorrow.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

A picture of the problem area please?

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John
Hooked on Ponics

pictures

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

Get some thread seal paste and apply liberally to the inside fitting. Reassemble and the leak will disappear.

Tony, the leak is not coming from any threads. Here are some more pictures that will probably make my mistake very plain. The hole is in a bad place. The molding of the bottom of the barrel makes it not Flat. (My true mistake was that I went ahead and followed the instructions even thought my instincts said, that molding it going to cause a problem.)

here are the pictures. I'm still looking for a suitable chunk of material to make a patch. Then I will probably re-position the new hole away from the old one and adjust barrel position so hopefully everything will still work.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

Is it worth attempting use of a heat gun and some of the barrel plastic cut away to weld a patch in place? Right now I don't have any good flat bits of similar plastic to silicone over the problem spot.

Maybe just using the heat gun on the curved bits of barrel plastic will let me flatten them out. Ok, still playing.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

Poop, any chance you could adjust for the little ridge with some gasket material (rubber), level it out with some, so the fitting would see a level surface? Id try that before a patch you might get it working.
Dont see a heat gun getting the temp needed for a patch, unless it had a tip to concentrate the heat to a small spot then you could do it bit by bit perhaps. I have never been down that road so not sure.

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John
Hooked on Ponics

I did a fair bit of messing around with extra gasket materials and such the other day when I discovered the leak. Didn't work, gasket material is just a bit too flexible for such a situation. If I had happened to have a large amount of something like epoxi I might have tried to create a flat surface on either side of the hole that way but I don't know the safety of using such a thing in this situation and didn't have a large amount on hand anyway.

Well I attempted to flatten out a bit of the scrap barrel cut outs. No deal, it went from an almost simple curve to something kinda potato chip shaped after it cooled.

The cook decided to replace a few of those thin plastic cutting boards the other day so I pulled one out of the trash and am giving it a try as a patch. A bit thin so I may risk it warping and breaking the seal over time but perhaps it will work for a bit. Drilled new hole in a position I hope will work.

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Aquaponic Lynx
Main System
300 gallon System
Tower System
PeePonics

hello tcl

in cases like these i rather choose to patch the wrong hole and make a new one on the flat part

i use two 5mm thick plastics, drill a hole in the center through both, then i put one piece in the inside one on the outside, seal it with aquarium sylicon and squeeze it togheter with a screw through the center and a bolt on the inside, screw it togheter and leave it for 24h

why i prefere to do it this way? because patching leaks like those is a bitch, everytime u move something, you've got a leak because of that hole(between the edge and the seal) there
and if you ever try to disasemble it, you've got it all glued togheter and you have to mess things up

drill the second hole and watch it this time where you do it, this was a valueable leason for me and i never have leaks since then, even with
multiple patches

p.s.

those round drills to make holes are pretty unprecise, so i test it on some waste material and measure the hole if it fits the seal as tight as possible(+-0,4 mm of what it should be), if the test hole isn't correct, i modify the drill saw untill it drills me the right hole. IF i negolect this, a leak always turns out somewhere....although i think u'r using flat seals not O-rings like i am, so maybe this info is useless:)

good luck!